My stress is off the chain..... I hit a fiber optic!!!

[fastline]

I don't need a good lashing right now. I am already beating my head on the wall hard enough. I am working a 'little' job that has become a nightmare. I am doing a few projects for a guy, mostly rework a tiny pond and bury some old concrete. I hit nasty hard red shale and job is just eating my lunch. Guy wanted the culvert entrance moved. I told him that is usually the township guys and why not get it done free. They would not even visit the site (too busy) and once they found out there would be a machine onsite, they said, "just get it done".

I dug up the old pipe and in the course of cleaning the material from the old location to move to the new site, I hit pay dirt! I frigging 48 pipe optic. I know the company that is out doing rural Inet. They are a great company, but I am beyond worried with this deal what they may do to me. Fiber was no more than 24" deep. Possibly because they smacked that red shale that I hit, or the fact that erosion has really eat up that ditch. The fiber was direct buried so I will assume they pulled it in. The stuff by me is being bored and in conduit. The fiber only feeds 2 homes in a rural area. I know they are running 48 strand just because that is what they are getting a smoking deal on. I think they only have 1 pipe terminated to feed the two homes. One pipe can serve an entire neighborhood. At least where I hit it, there is a JB only 75-100ft away. Again, I TOTALLY spaced it! Had I seen the JB, I would not even have moved the culvert! You can't hand dig shale doing the carefuling method.

I am looking for some positive feedback (could use it) or what you guys have encountered? I have not hit a utility in years. I try to stick with less stressful work. This one just tapped me out. My only play here is to plead desperation and stupidity. I know some utility guys are super cool but this is just stressing me out.

 

[MarshallPowerGen]

Worked for my uncle putting in a church parking lot and he hit fiber with an excavator. I don't know if he had to cover the cost of repair, but they had their guy out there to patch it up the next day and we were right back to work.

 

[CM1995]

Assuming you did not have an 811 dig locate?

If so then go this route -

My only play here is to plead desperation and stupidity.

Seriously we've never hit a fiber line (knocks on wood) but we've hit a few phone and cable lines in addition to a few gas and power too. The lines we hit weren't marked by the locators so we weren't out of pocket anything.

Can't stress enough the value of calling in a Line Locate. Best of luck.

 

[AzIron]

In my experience residential fiber is cheaper than commercial if it's only 2 houses then there is no loss of revenue to worry about if you have relationship with the contractor that does it and no one no knows you might skate a beer repair

If you didn't butcher it might be patchable

 

[JLarson]

Yeah if it's a end run resi deal and a smaller rural ISP you might avoid really getting bent over. But without the 811....

 

[savman]

I've damaged an AT&T fiber line with a concrete steel stake. They sent an army of trucks and were all upset until I pointed out we were six feet from the painted line and the fiber was less than a foot deep. Essentially the same thing I said to the gas company that we punctured with another stake on the same job earlier in the day. Lol; everything was super shallow for some reason.

I don't know who paid for the army of ATT workers but it wasn't me. It didn't take them long fwiw, so I guess it all depends how bad you damaged the line.

One thing I have seen with when dealing with utilities, although I've never personally been on the business end of one of their bills so to speak, is they really come out of the gate swinging. But eventually people I know have had success wearing them down, where they eventually capitulated and agreed to a drastically lower number. Drastically lower. Now all these instances were fees, crazy crazy high fees, for running service; but I suspect you could wear them down in the same manner for a repair bill. To be fair, I would expect it to be tougher sledding and less discount; but you never know.

You have to remember most of these utilities are more akin to government agencies than they are businesses. They don't look at profit and loss the same way we do. At the end of the day if push comes to shove just remember whatever bureaucrat you are dealing with isn't dealing with his own money.

Hopefully eventually they'll either tire of dealing with you and agree to something reasonable or realize that if they have to take you to court the only person that will win is the lawyers and will arrive at the same conclusion.

If it were me I would 1.) hope I get lucky; 2.) pay the bill if it's reasonable (after all it is my fault); 3.) contact my insurance company and tell them to get their check writing hand warmed up.....in that order.

If that didn't work....I would wait them out and plead poverty and just try and grind them down.

But yea, the real takeaway is always call for a locate. Always.

 

[KSSS]

Here the utility can go after you civilly as well as it's a State code violation. Hopefully that isn't the issue in your case. If have not yet done so, I would call your insurance company and let them handle it. It sounds like a residential type drop line. Odd that it wasn't in a conduit, here it is typically in a poly water line type conduit, you likely would have went through it anyway, but I have never heard of it direct buried. Most of it here is about 2' deep, about the same as gas line. Your really lucky it wasn't a larger line. Situation could be much worse than it is. Your insurance will likely go up for a while. I do hope your insured.

 

[hosspuller]

My sympathies to Fastline. This is a very fortunate thread for me. I was asked to use a tractor auger to do some postholes at the edge of a gas line. It's pro bono work. I knew better but forgot there may be other lines beside the obvious gas line. Luckily for me the weather delayed the work. I just e-mailed the people and stated I won't be doing any digging until Locate marks the lines in the area.

 

[AzIron]

The biggest hurdle is the lack of an 811 ticket that would be the thing that sink you here

But in today's day and age you never know what you might get away with

 

[Jonas302]

Start by keeping your hoe there so they don't have to bring a mini to dig the repair junction boxes play it nice with the repair guys tell them how foolish you were and help expedite the job

When the office sends a bill you can try for a reduction but with no locate you have no grounds to stand on it wont be the end of the world but will cost several thousand

The last nonfiber phone line that we hit unlocated was 3000

 

[skyking1]

When I dug the loading dock at the shop last month, I forgot to call locate. It was property they had owned for at least 60 years, but I bit the bullet, put in a ticket and delayed the job a couple of days. It rained like crazy those days so it did not hurt the cause much, but it was my own neglect that was the reason. Best of luck to you fastline.

 

[CM1995]

Here the utility can go after you civilly as well as it's a State code violation.

Same here.

We hit an unmarked ATT data line to a bank once. Had a current 811 number and all the utilities were marked except for ATT. At that time ATT wasn't USIC to locate and had a new company that was way behind - yet I didn't know that..

The site was an old gas station next to an operating bank. The gas, water, power and other phone/data lines were all marked and we were past the 48 hour mark so we start demo. A couple of days later we come across an unmarked phone line. We think nothing about it and keep going. Thankfully it was the banks phone/data line - not the "call the police instantly" line.

As our crew is taking pictures of the area and lack of marks, ATT shows up with 3 trucks, USIC shows up and then out of the blue another line locating company shows up and starts painting orange on the ground where there were no orange marks before... USIC guy then tells me about ATT's new line locate company hired because they were cheaper than USIC and how far behind they are due to being understaffed..

Fast forward to 6 months later. We get a bill for almost $4K from ATT. Sent them a letter with pictures explaining in detail what happened, how it was their line locating company's problem and we are not paying for their negligence.

Get a couple of more nasty letters from ATT over the next couple of months then they start to lower the "bill". ATT threatens to turn it over to their attorney which I said take your best shot as they are going to spend more than $4K in lawyers fees just to file the paperwork in an Alabama court.

So we get a letter from their attorney demanding payment of $1200 within 10 days of the letter. Lawyer was from Georgia with an office in a 30 year old strip mall, probably bought the "claim" for pennies on the dollar hoping to collect something. The last letter we received from the attorney was for $600 and change to settle, never paid a dime. That was 2 years ago.

 

[savman]

We hit a DOT street light line last week while demolishing a section of sidewalk to access a storm sewer box. We were demolishing the section by hand (and digging the first 6 or 8 feet of storm sewer by hand) as I knew the street light line was near (we had previously tied into this same box earlier in the job, albeit at a different angle...change orders) and there was gas an water under the sidewalk as well.

The street light line was laid on the ground bare wire and the sidewalk poured on top of it. We broke one line while fracturing the concrete with a sledge hammer before we noticed the wire. It wasn't critical to the light operation but it must have threw some sort of code and a GADOT repair man was there within a half hour.

He came out of the gate saying we were liable for the repair and the area must be inspected before we could pour back the sidewalk etc. We had a brand new 811 ticket for this change order but he says the DOT isn't on 811's call list and if we are digging within 1000 feet of a traffic signal...yes 1000 feet... we have to call the local DOT office for an inspection.

First he asked if we had a GADOT permit (which we did) and then he said well it states plainly on the permit that you must call for a locate if working within 1000 feet. Well, I had a copy of the permit and show him that it said no such thing whatsoever. He said well you're still liable. So I got my GC involved and the area DOT supervisor (whom I had met with personally before starting the change order to make sure all our boxes were ticked as we had a lane shift on a state hwy for a portion of the change order). The supervisor came out there and decided somebody had made an unauthorized repair in the section we uncovered. The repair was supposed to be in conduit and buried....so long story short we weren't liable.

Oh yea, and on the repair you couldn't just splice the wires together you had to cut a brand new loop in the street all the way back to the signal box. Sounded fairly expensive. At any rate, we weren't liable; but only because we had all our bases covered.

We dodged a bullet and learned a valuable lesson re: traffic signal locates.

 

[savman]

We hit an unmarked gas main in a small city a couple of months ago. We had current 811 tickets and everything.

By unmarked I mean 75 feet up a city street away from the marked gas line along the state highway.

Well the small city operated the local utilities....they couldn't clamp the line shut, the normal repair tech was out with COVID and was called in to come on scene in shorts and flip flops trying to tell the fill in tech what to do, etc. And, wait for it....they couldn't find a valve to shut the line down as they didn't know the line was there. Fast forward 5 hours with all hands on deck including police and fire....they still couldn't find a valve.

Eventually they had to call in the larger city utility company who supplies the gas....they brought a crew in and remedied the situation...on overtime I'm sure. I was long gone by then as my GC had given me the all clear to leave.

No telling how much gas blew out of the line to say nothing of all the personnel involved.

If we didn't have a ticket it could have been catastrophic. Somebody paid for all those bodies.

 

[suladas]

IMO I wouldn't involve insurance unless you get a bill, you might just get lucky.

My unlucky time was doing a excavation, there was 2 old abandoned water lines (or I was told they were), last bucket wasn't much room I needed to reposition even though I should have known better and why the CC was still there the edge of the track went over top, get finished back out and there is water flowing into the excavation, pulled off the CC connection. Anyways the utility company has about 10 people there within 20 mins because they have to go down the block to tell everyone water is getting turned off and no idea when it will be back. The neighbor's were already pissed about the development, I don't think it was 30 mins after it happened and I got a call from the owner of the builder asking what's going on because someone had already called them complaining. By the time I got back with my truck to pick up the hoe the utility had locator's, backhoe, site office and tons of pickups there and this was like 7pm on a friday. I checked at like 11pm before I went to bed and water was still listed as out. Long short short utility called me for billing info for bill expecting me to pay, I forwarded them email from general that told me water lines were abandoned, utility ended up eating cost because they said they had to be abandoned anyway, the only difference was that it was an emergency call instead of regular. Which surprised me, paying everyone double time for I bet a 6-8 hour repair wouldn't have been cheap.

Other time was excavating around house for foundation replacement, owner didn't want to wait/pay for gas company to cut back line and stupidly I agree to dig around it. Gas line took a really stupid path, long story short nicked it. Gas company comes out and my first call isn't valid, I figure i'm getting a bill for sure. Guy looked it up and said you've never hit anything and this line should have been cut back any way, this one's free but don't let it happen again. It maybe took 2 guys maybe 30 mins and it was cut back and capped anyway not a big deal.

They don't operate like private companies, at the end of the day it's not their money and they really don't answer to anyone so they just seem to let a lot go.

But I won't dig anything without a valid first call now, even if I know nothings there. The first calls are terrible but at least it covers you and showed you tried to do your best.

 

[cuttin edge]

Don't want to be the one to say it, but... have they been called? Did anyone see you do it? Did an angry home owner come out and complain because you knocked out their Netflix and they are missin their shows? Cover it up, and say nothing. Unless you junked it, or talked about it on an online forum......

 

[hosspuller]

Another waterline story... Factory has been there ten years. The area is growing and a C-store is built on land next to the factory. Since the C-store has cleared the area, public access is now a potential issue. So we build a fence on the property line. We're a major corporation so hiring a surveyor to mark the line is standard procedure. Fence is to be one foot inside the marked line. Don't you know the fence company drilled a posthole right through the C-store's water line. Now this is another problem since the water line is an encroachment on to company property. Add to the fact, the C-store has a propane tank next to the property line... This is contra to NFPA 58 and building code. I transferred out before the dust & lawyers settled so I can't complete this dumpster fire of a story.

 

[suladas]

Don't want to be the one to say it, but... have they been called? Did anyone see you do it? Did an angry home owner come out and complain because you knocked out their Netflix and they are missin their shows? Cover it up, and say nothing. Unless you junked it, or talked about it on an online forum......

I've done that a few times with coaxable cables, patch them up and cover them because the stupid things are only a few inches down. In a case like this, got to admit if no one seen it I might be tempted. But if it comes back on you, it's going to sting a lot worse if you tried to cover it up.

 

[suladas]

Another waterline story... Factory has been there ten years. The area is growing and a C-store is built on land next to the factory. Since the C-store has cleared the area, public access is now a potential issue. So we build a fence on the property line. We're a major corporation so hiring a surveyor to mark the line is standard procedure. Fence is to be one foot inside the marked line. Don't you know the fence company drilled a posthole right through the C-store's water line. Now this is another problem since the water line is an encroachment on to company property. Add to the fact, the C-store has a propane tank next to the property line... This is contra to NFPA 58 and building code. I transferred out before the dust & lawyers settled so I can't complete this dumpster fire of a story.

Drilling threw a water line is fun time. I wasn't running machine but drilled through a 6" water line. It was for a oil field company, only drilling 2 holes and 1 managed to hit the water line dead center. Didn't have a single bit of issue getting paid or blamed for it though. The company was huge on safety and making sure locates were done before starting and were assured nothing was anywhere close to work site, last I heard they were going after private locate company for missing it. I bet they lost a few thousand in water alone, and it was in december so the whole area was a skating rink.

 

[AzIron]

Same here.

We hit an unmarked ATT data line to a bank once. Had a current 811 number and all the utilities were marked except for ATT. At that time ATT wasn't USIC to locate and had a new company that was way behind - yet I didn't know that..

The site was an old gas station next to an operating bank. The gas, water, power and other phone/data lines were all marked and we were past the 48 hour mark so we start demo. A couple of days later we come across an unmarked phone line. We think nothing about it and keep going. Thankfully it was the banks phone/data line - not the "call the police instantly" line.

As our crew is taking pictures of the area and lack of marks, ATT shows up with 3 trucks, USIC shows up and then out of the blue another line locating company shows up and starts painting orange on the ground where there were no orange marks before... USIC guy then tells me about ATT's new line locate company hired because they were cheaper than USIC and how far behind they are due to being understaffed..

Fast forward to 6 months later. We get a bill for almost $4K from ATT. Sent them a letter with pictures explaining in detail what happened, how it was their line locating company's problem and we are not paying for their negligence.

Get a couple of more nasty letters from ATT over the next couple of months then they start to lower the "bill". ATT threatens to turn it over to their attorney which I said take your best shot as they are going to spend more than $4K in lawyers fees just to file the paperwork in an Alabama court.

So we get a letter from their attorney demanding payment of $1200 within 10 days of the letter. Lawyer was from Georgia with an office in a 30 year old strip mall, probably bought the "claim" for pennies on the dollar hoping to collect something. The last letter we received from the attorney was for $600 and change to settle, never paid a dime. That was 2 years ago.

That would still be sticky here cause the law states it's on the contractor to verify locate and while they have to respond in three days if they haven't your ticket is not clear till they do and then your fighting the bureaucracy

Certain areas in town have way better response times than others and the city's and the utilities that still do there own located respond better

That said there is a water company out in the west valley that doesnt respond to 811 and 811 specifically tells you to call them direct last time I had that encounter it took 2 weeks to get w after line marked that we were supposed to tap